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Purdue professor turning science fiction into reality

Rebecca Kramer, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University, is close to turning fiction into reality with her research in “soft robotics," which recently landed her a spot in Forbes’ 2015 “30 Under 30” list in manufacturing and industry.

The robot villain in the movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” can suddenly dissolve into a pool of liquid metal, slipping through cracks in doors or drains in the floor, only to reshape itself afterward.

“The ‘Terminator 2’ blob — where it’s a liquid metal and then it coalesces into the robot, and then it performs some sort of task and then it breaks down again — it’s my dream,” Kramer said. “We’re going to build that; we’re going to build the ‘Terminator 2’ robot.”

Kramer is close to turning fiction into reality with her research in “soft robotics” — a field so new it’s difficult to explain the potential applications and so groundbreaking it recently landed her a spot in the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in manufacturing and industry. Her experimentation with gallium indium oxide has especially futuristic implications: The surface of the liquid metal oxidizes when it meets air, forming a thick skin resembling that of a semi-solid material.

“It gives it a semi-solid-type state, where it has some structural integrity because of this skin,” she said.

Kramer, 29, is the founder of Purdue’s Faboratory — a mashup of “fabric” and “laboratory” — which since 2013 has worked to create robotic fabrics capable of accomplishing tasks more traditional, rigid robots can’t.

“I think (millennials) have a nice library of inspiration because of how awesome movies have gotten — (the) technology in terms of moviemaking and the imagination that goes into that,” she said. “I feel like I sit through those movies and I think, ‘I want to make that,’ and then I try to figure out how to do it.”

The potential applications for soft robotics are endless, Kramer said, and equally futuristic: a soft, flexible robot that could squeeze through rubble and debris while locating survivors in a building collapse; an impact-resistant, extraterrestrial rover that could easily land on alien planets; or wearable technology, a growing trend, that could enhance endurance in soldiers and laborers or provide data in real time to athletes.

“When you’re doing day-to-day tasks ... you don’t want to be wearing something that’s cumbersome and that you feel is actually restricting the way that you can move and preventing you from doing tasks,” she said. “So we really like this idea of streamlining robotics right into your clothing.”

The idea of such technology is so new, however, some tools necessary to make it a reality have yet to be invented, putting Kramer and her colleagues in a truly unique place in history.

“Soft robotics is at such a stage of infancy that the basic components — the things that will make it move, the things that will allow power to be transported from a storage unit to a muscle, sensors that tell the robot anything about its environment or its state — all of those things just don’t exist,” she said. “We are literally building soft robotics from the ground up.”

Kramer said her generation is the product of new technologies, and not the other way around. The Internet, for instance, has expedited the research process, she said, giving young people access to information never before so readily available and serving as a catalyst for more innovative research.

“I think that research is happening at a really fast pace right now,” she said, “because of how quickly we have access to so much information.”

Last year, Kramer was among seven researches selected by NASA for Early Career Faculty Awards. More recently, she received the National Science Foundation’s Early Career Development Award. She is a graduate of Harvard University, University of California-Berkley and Johns Hopkins University.

Ian Klein, a graduate student in the College of Science’s Department of Chemistry, and Purdue alum Livia Eberlin also were named to this year’s “30 Under 30” list.